


Komorebi

by glossary



Category: One Piece
Genre: Childhood Friends, Female Monkey D. Luffy, First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glossary/pseuds/glossary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killing the peacock was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The bird struggled incessantly and Sabo, soft and dimpled, tired out too quickly – he kept going on sheer rage and craziness, stabbing wildly at the bird until the bed was full of feathers and blood, and the bird’s open eyes stared at nothing. </p><p>“Fucking crazy bird,” he said, spooked, and ran out.</p><p>But he took a knife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Komorebi

Make no mistake of this: in Sabo there was no grief.

Hunger was as one of death’s ravens, fluttering its wings low in his belly―he became able to divine the shape of his ribs underneath skin delicate as a peach. The bump of his ankle, his knobby elbows and the sharpness of his hips – there was desperation there, but also a bitter satisfaction. Only his face, with its chubby cheeks, retained any hint of softness, but he made up for it with the glittering eyes of a hungry wolf.

It was what he liked best about Ace when they met. He looked a little crazy, too.

His father said men like him had blood so blue it sparkled in the winter sun, blue like blueberries, blue like certain shades of lipstick, blue like the gem in the hilt of his father’s knife (which had never been used but looked pretty enough). His father said men were to be cruel, because they led the beginning of everything. When he was older Sabo would think about the hollow between a woman’s legs, about delicate bones melting into calves and hardening into knees, and that soft secret space like the road to Shangri-la. Back then he said not a word, but he did lure one of the peacocks his father kept in the garden towards his parents’ room, and then he killed it with his father’s knife.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The bird struggled incessantly and Sabo, soft and dimpled, tired out too quickly – he kept going on sheer rage and craziness, stabbing wildly at the bird until the bed was full of feathers and blood, and the bird’s open eyes stared at nothing.

“Fucking crazy bird,” he said, spooked, and ran out.

But he took a knife. It felt cold in his hand.

*

The day he met Ace he was trying to steal the butcher’s skin mags.

If he’d been older he would’ve thought twice about it – if he’d been even older he would’ve been dubious about touching somebody else’s skin mangs – but he was a stupid nine year old child, and the lure of the forbidden made his spine all tingly and weird.

There was a group of loudmouthed preteens who hung out on the corner where Sabo liked to pickpocket. Most of them looked healthy enough – some even had mended trousers, a sign of somebody’s caring, but they egged each other on to do things like spook cats or splash leashed dogs until the housewives came out to chase them with a broom. Sabo watched them constantly because they were basically his role model at that point: he definitely didn’t want to be like his father, and there weren’t any other steady male presences in his life. That was why he heard them murmuring about the skin mags while he idly eyed a young woman who was shopping for tomatoes.

“I tell you it’s real.”

“Sousuke saw it.”

There was a shocked moment where everybody turned to look at Sousuke – the wimpy looking one, Sabo thought, with the glasses and the shaved head. He was the skinniest and the one who got along best with his mother, but once in a while he’d do something so amazingly stupid it truly cemented his standing within the group.

“No way.”

“Sousuke, really?”

“Oh man! How was it?”

Sousuke rejoiced in the attention for a few minutes before leaning closer and going, “They’re real.”

Just that. _They’re real_. Sabo decided he lacked imagination. (A side-effect of rejecting his only male presence was that now Sabo was overly critical, but he decided this was better than being half as dumb as that peacock who had followed him so sedately to his father’s bedroom. He sure as hell didn’t want to die because somebody offered him a fistful of corn.)

Still, the boys lost their collective heads – there was a lot of excited elbowing and exclamations and nervous shushing that made them look even more suspicious. They crowded together and Sabo subtly shifted closer, even as the young woman paid her tomatoes and began the trek home.

“I only had time to page one because my mum was with me,” Sousuke whispered urgently. “But they’re _definitely_ the real deal – not like that weird half piece Masamune found buried in the forest.”

“Hey,” Masamune protested, but nobody paid him any attention, since because of that they’d spent two weeks straight digging random holes in the forest when the sun was so hot only their prurient adolescent minds burned hotter.

“I saw,” Sousuke continued, “this one lady – so my mum’s chatting with the butcher, right, and I ask for a glass of water because I don’t care anything for the price of pork or whatever―”

“Pork. Yeah, _right_ , everybody knows that butcher sells skunk―”

“Thought it was rat―”

“ _So anyway_ the butcher’s like, yeah, sure, go out back and you can grab a glass of water, son. And I step inside and take the glass and fill it with water, thinking deep thoughts, when I see this piece of paper poking out of the sofa cushions. Naturally, I get curious.”

“You mean you’re a nosy fuck.” A chorus of laughter, both at the insult and the swearword, and the brave little soldier got slapped on the back a few times.

Sousuke looked offended. “Yeah, whatever. So I get curious, right? And I grab the paper and pull it up a little and I’m like, man, wow, what the fuck, and _it’s this sexy-looking nurse with her nurse apron thing open_ , just like―showing off―”

“ _No way!_ ”

“You’re kidding!”

“Sousuke, really?”

“I swear to all the gods,” Sousuke swore. “It’s real. And you bet your ass the next time my mum goes to the butcher’s I’m going with her―”

More laughter. They walked away to go look for something to do, wilfully disregarding their grumpy mothers at home and their waiting homework. Sabo leant back against an alley wall and chewed his lip anxiously. He was a good thief, he thought, and then: _what the hell am I thinking? That’s too stupid…_ But then he rememberd the congratulatory slaps, and the gentle ribbing, and his stomach went a bit hollow.

It was the best, being free and wild and _an adventurer_ , basically, but he couldn’t go around telling everybody he met he was a noble’s runaway son. His father would find him in two hours. His fair hair and his sharp way of speaking definitely let others know he’d been in the upper class at one point in his life, though, and it mostly pushed children away from him ― a complicated mix of jealousy and wariness. The bluebloods have the hearts of vipers, mothers told their daughters whenever a noble started to eye her up, so forget about any fancy notions you’ve got in that head, silly child – they snap you up and they never let go.

It was definitely too stupid, he decided, so it would probably be okay if he did it. Not like those boys were all that smart, anyway. They’d definitely be impressed when he stole the stupid skin mags.

He planned it out meticulously. The butcher was a tall, heavy man, tanned and sloe-eyed and usually wearing a blood-stained apron and a machete in his hand. Sabo wasn’t sure about the skunk or the rat meat, but he was sure he sold dogs when there wasn’t enough game, and despite his slow, thoughtful way of speaking, those muscles bigger than boulders made him cautious. He didn’t want to end up chopped up for his liver in the back of the butcher’s shop because he’d tried to lift a few stupid magazines.

That was why he waited until noon, the shop’s busiest time. As luck would have it, the butcher was manning it on his own that day, so he certainly didn’t have the time to spare, and feeling a delicious relief in his throat, Sabo climbed in through the back window and eyed the room warily.

That was when a tiny fist shot out and hit him in the kidneys. Sabo doubled up, startled by the pain, but the streets had trained him well and he hit back with his elbow, jabbing a skinny chest. There was a yelp of surprise and a gasp and he turned around to see a small fierce-eyed child with tousled black hair and an angry moue.

(Sabo would tell the story one day, and Ace would make fun of him for being the kind of child who would say _angry moue_ , and Sabo would whack him with a wooden spoon.)

“What the hell!” Sabo said, which adequately expressed his surprise.

“What the hell!” said the boy right back at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Sabo. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Ace.”

They eyed each other suspiciously. Then, almost simultaneously, each reached out and decked the other in the face. Sabo’s lip split and he tasted blood, but his own punch glanced off and hit the boy’s cheek – he felt teeth under his knuckles and, sure enough, the boy staggered back and spat pinkish saliva on the ground. Sabo threw himself at him and they rolled around on the floor in a mess of elbows and knees and hair-pulling. In one occasion Ace stuck his fingers up Sabo’s nose, which quickly set on fire the last of Sabo’s reserves. He was biting the boy’s ear when there was the sound of footsteps and they both froze.

They got up wordlessly and Sabo looked around for a place to hide while the boy walked around aimlessly, jumping nervously and waving his hands like a demented chicken. There was a tiny closet in one corner – the sort of place where one might store extra clothes in case of an accident – and he snagged Ace’s collar as he marched there with a few quick steps. He’d just stuffed both Ace and himself inside and closed the closet door when they heard the butcher’s voice say, “Huh? I could swear I heard something…”

After a startling moment, he realised he hadn’t been this close to nobody in quite a time. Ace was bumpy and skinny and smelled gross like a boy, plus he was all sticky with sweat from their fight, but he was also warm and his hair was surprisingly soft. Sabo guessed somebody forced him to bathe regularly. Wouldn’t have expected it just by looking at him.

There were shuffling sounds and some more thoughtful _hmms_ before somebody yelled for the butcher to come back already, because they’d left the oven on back at home and they weren’t up to waiting forever. The butcher dutifully rushed out and Sabo and Ace jumped out of the closet, breathing heavily and eyeing each other with a lot more curiosity this time.

“What did you say your name was?” Ace asked.

“Sabo,” he said, and then – pretending he couldn’t remember Ace’s – “And yours?”

“Ace.” The boy smiled a huge grin suddenly – it lit up his dumb-looking face into the kind of expression that made women melt in the market. Sometimes they even handed out a coin. Sabo was a little jealous he’d managed to get that face all on his own, because his had taken quite some time to learn. “What’re you doing here, then?”

“I came for the skin mags,” Ace said. “Those stupid boys wouldn’t let me hang out with them, so I thought if I got them…”

“Me too.” Sabo ventured to ask: “Do you know what skin mags are?”

“Huh? No, not really. Do you know?”

Sabo shook his head.

“We should say we found them,” Ace offered. “And we even stole them and took them home.”

“They won’t believe us,” Sabo said, dubious but interested despite himself.

“And what are they going to do, break into my room to check if they’re hidden under my bed?” Ace barked a puff of laughter. “Dadan would kill them.”

As they climbed out the window, Sabo asked curiously: “Who’s Dadan?”

“She’s like the devil, but uglier.”

“Cool!”

“Right?”

*

And then there was Luffy:

“This is Luffy,” Ace said the day he brought Sabo over for dinner. “She’s my little sister.”

He looked supremely proud. Sabo eyed the little girl suspiciously.

Luffy was even smaller than Ace when they’d first met, but she looked a little like a scruffy doll – honey-skinned and glossy eyed, with her hair cut short and stuck in clumps like baby chicken fluff. Her cheeks were very chubby and her hands small and dimpled, and so were her knees ― all of her looked soft and pretty but also sort of crazy-looking, if that made sense.

Then she grinned at him. “Hi!” she chirped happily, and leaned forward to grab his hand. Startled, Sabo tried to step back but she hung on, boneheaded. “I’m Luffy!”

“I know,” he said, bemused.

She grinned at him some more.

Sabo looked at Ace, but he was just standing there, arms crossed, looking satisfied as if everything was right with the world. And then Luffy tried to bite him.

He got what Ace had meant by Dadan, too ― she was a huge woman, redhaired and fierce, and she yelled a lot at Ace. She was a little kinder with Luffy, but only in that blustery way some people had when they couldn’t bear to be openly nice. After dinner Ace and Sabo hung out in Ace’s room and talked about their new goal, which was to get a pirate ship and sail away in adventures. His father _definitely_ wouldn’t be able to find him then, that was for sure.

Dadan yelled at Ace from the other room to go shower already, and reluctantly Ace marched off ( _hah_ , Sabo thought) so he just lay back on Ace’s lumpy bed and looked at the ceiling for a while. His head felt full and spinny and kind of stupid, and his heart almost popped like a balloon when he heard a _crunch_.

He sat up on the bed and looked around. There was nothing in there – except… another crunch. With his pulse beating madly at his throat, Sabo leaned over the bed and looked under it to find Luffy stuffing crispy vegetables into her mouth.

He looked at her. She chewed slowly, as if hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“What are you even doing?” he asked her.

“Ace makes fun of me for liking vegetables,” she said sulkily.

That made sense.

“Okay,” Sabo said, and lay back down feeling young and soft and safe as he hadn’t in a very, very long time.


End file.
